ORE MEDICI ROTHSCHILD Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 2011. full velvet, all edges gilt, metal book casing, enamel designs, leather slipcase. Illuminated Manuscripts. small 8vo. full velvet, all edges gilt, metal book casing, enamel designs, leather slipcase. 235, 223 pages. Facsimile with accompanying hardcover commentary. Towards 1485, Lorenzo de &#39;Medici commissioned the most successful miniature painters of Florence for which they were to create three luxurious Books of Hours to be allocated to his daughters as wedding presents. Of these little books, the first, now housed in Monaco, was given to Lucretia, who married Jacopo Salviati. The second, currently at the Laurentian Library, was designed for Luisa, betrothed to Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de &#39;Medici and died before the wedding. The third was a wedding present for Mary Magdalene, married to Count Franceschetto Cibo, natural son of Pope Innocent VIII. The story of his gift to his three daughters, commonly referred to as The Three Moons, is the touching testimony of the loving gesture of a great Renaissance master. Magdalene de &#39;Medici in Florence, born July 25, 1473, was the favorite daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent . Her marriage to Franceschetto Cibo, the son of Pope Innocent VIII, was of fundamental importance for the Florentine family. The significance of the marriage was to gain more prestige and have closer relations with the pope. With this wedding, the second son of Lorenzo, John, would later become Pope under the name of Leo X. On the occasion of the wedding, Lorenzo gave Mary Magdalene a small, refined prayer book which is now preserved in the Rothschild collection of Waddesdon Manor, located in England. The book was designed with more beauty in mind than the other two books, but unfortunately it is now devoid of the original binding which was lost centuries. The Franco Cosimo Panini Editore has miraculously restored the appearance of this book in every detail, thus bringing to light this extraordinary jewel dedicated to Mary Magdalene de &#39;Medici. In the usual iconography of the annunciation, the book is accompanied by the figures of Mary Magdalene and St. John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence, depicted on the front and back plates in polychrome enamels. The clasps are redesigned in the form of twisted ropes and five raised bands adore the spine of the binding. The illustrations are the work of several artists, among them being the great Florentine miniaturist Mariano del Buono. The Rothschild Hours Doctors are the twelfth in the series entitled "The Library Can Not," the most authoritative and valuable collection of facsimiles dedicated to the Renaissance. Like all facsimile editions, the Rothschild Hours Doctors has been fully reproduced to all of the features of the original manuscript. Maximum attention was given to the color details of the illustrations. The binding of the book was entrusted to expert workshops, which used the same techniques used in the late fifteenth century. Skilled workers such as binders, silversmiths, goldsmiths, and engravers have brought to light one of the most valuable books of the Florentine period. It was reproduced in a limited edition of only 550 numbered copies. This lovely facsimile is accompanied by an additional volume with lovely illustrations and a detailed history of the family, marriage, and 15th century techniques used to produce this book.

Dalli Sonetti, BartolomeoPatmos. "Pactamos Greece: Venice. Guilelmus Anima Mia, Tridinensis, 1485-6. Woodcut map with original handcolour of Patmos from the first printed maritime atlas: Bartolomeo Dalli Sonetti&#39;s "Isolario". text to verso [ sonnet: description of Lipsos ] The island within a wind rose has the Monastery of Saint John of the Apocalypse in the centre of the island within the town of Chora the capital. The Cave of the Apocalypse is also marked, plus 2 other settlements The cartography is naive but if seen as just the southern part of the island it makes more sense. Light dampstaining to lower part of page; ink number to upper right corner. From the FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST PRINTED MARITIME ATLAS, the only incunable edition, and the only fifteenth-century book illustrated with nautical charts. The first in a long series of printed Italian island-books, the "Isolario" provides a detailed survey of the Aegean archipelago. The appealingly decorative charts clearly derive from the portolan manuscript tradition: each chart is projected on a wind-rose marked with compass bearings, the orientation varying from chart to chart. Tony Campbell writes "Bartolommeo dalli Sonetti&#39;s Isolario breaks new ground in a number of ways. It is the first printed island-book; it is the earliest printed collection of charts ... it contains the first printed maps supposedly based on actual observation; and it is the first printed collection of maps to owe no debt to Ptolemy" [Campbell Maps 89-92] In the"Isolario", over 70 sonnets give readers geographical, historical and archaeological descriptions of each of the Aegean islands. Charts are depicted next to each of the verses. The charts themselves, surrounded by the rose of eight winds circle, have symbols indicating rocks and shallow waters and, on the land, forests, villages and monasteries. It was the written verse in Bartolomeo&#39;s "Isolario" that gave the author the epithet of "Dalli Sonetti", "Of the Sonnets". Bartolomeo: some authorities identify with Bartolomeo Zamberti, while others recognize the author as Bartolommeo Turco, a friend of Leonardo da Vinci. Little is known about him except from his own preface to the "Isolario": that he was Venetian and was an officer of triremes fifteen times, then" patron in the ship "and sailed on behalf of the noble families of his city,such as the Loredan, the Barbarigo, the Zorzi, the Mocenigo, the Basadonna, the Querini. He claims that he approached several times each and every rock island in the Aegean Sea and the perfect knowledge that ensued allowed him to complete the description in seventy sonnets, accompanied by forty-nine cartographic delineations. The descriptions Bartolomeo says stem first, from his direct knowledge of the islands but also from the writings of the ancients, such as Pomponius Mela and Strabo He wanted the descriptions to clarify the geographical situation, the physical, human, social, economic, historical, fauna and flora of the islands. The sonnets of little value poetic sometimes give less than the foreword of promises. The cartographic delineations adhere to the way of drawing the islands on portolan charts, but have no names. Zacherakis:3396/2224. Greece Dodecanesus & Southern Sporades Patmos Pactamos

ROLEWINCK, WernerFasciculus temporumÖ Venice,: Erhard Ratdolt, 8 September, 1485.. Folio, 8 unnumbered and 66 numbered leaves, illustrated with woodcut illustrations throughout (including charming scenes of Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, the palace of the Doge in Venice ), woodcut diagrams of complicated genealogical charts, early annotations, passage of 9 lines relating to Pope Joan struck-through in ink; some light dampstaining and a few inoffensive wormholes, seventeenth-century manuscript inscription for "Collegio de Coimbra", bookplate of Albert Ehrman, Broxbourne label, Hatchwell ticket; a handsome copy in blind-tooled dark brown morocco by C. & C. McCleish. Splendid fifteenth century world chronicle, a contemporary bestseller recording the history of the world from creation to the early 1480s, richly illustrated with woodcut illustrations and diagrams, and famous for its ornate page design and complex use of type.The earliest chronological world history to be printed, this is an early edition of Werner Rolewinck's chronicle, first printed in 1474. Incredibly successful, the work was reprinted in all of the major publishing centres of Europe, often updated from the original text - as here - to reflect local interests or more current events. After a lengthy table of contents and introduction, the work begins with the biblical creation of the world, and then follows the major events of biblical, classical, and early modern history. Such chronologies were one of the most influential genres of the fifteenth century, a genre which includes works such as the Polycronicon of Ranulf Higden, which was published by Caxton: these works were the influential precursors to the histories and cosmographies written by their sixteenth century successors.Rolewinck (1425-1502) was a Carthusian monk and prolific author, and this book, which also appeared in several vernacular editions, was the most popular of his numerous writings. Certainly the woodcuts are the most dramatic and interesting aspect of the book, whether in the complicated genealogies, or the images of Noah's Ark with the rainbow, the Tower of Babel, the Temple of Solomon, or of contemporary European scenes; particularly compelling are the before and after scenes of cities laid waste by invasion, culminating in a simple but haunting image of the medieval city of Rhodes in ruins after the Ottoman invasion of 1480 and the earthquake which devastated the town in 1481.BMC V, 290; Goff , R-271.

MALORY. SIR THOMAS Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley.:LE MORTE DARTHUR, The Birth Life and Acts of King Arthur, of His Noble Knights of the Round Table and Their Marvellous Enquests and Adventures The Achieving of the San Greal and in the End Le Morte DArthur with the Dolourous Death and Departing Out of This World of Them All. The Text as Written by Sir Thomas Malory and imprinted by William Caxton at Westminster the Year 1485 and now Spelled in Modern Style, Embellished with Many Original Designs by Aubrey Beardsley. With an Introduction by Professor John Rhys, and a Note on Aubrey Beardsley by Almer Vallance. 3rd edition, 1927, limited to 1600 copies, divided into 21 books, 4to, approximately 295 x 230 mm, 11¾ x 9 inches, 22 plates including frontispiece, 5 are double page, frontispiece and 1 other plate are photogravures with tissue guards, many other small illustrations throughout and decorative borders, initials, and chapter headings, pages: lv, 538 including Glossary, original publisher's pictorial black cloth, gilt lettering and decoration to spine and upper cover, top edge gilt, the others untrimmed. Slight rubbing to binding, slight shelf-wear to bottom of spine, corners bumped and showing a little wear, frontispiece has pale stain to outer margin, not affecting the image, the other photogravure has a small pale stain to top and bottom edge of margins, pale offsetting from frontispiece to title page, 2 other very small pale stains to top margins, hardly noticeable, pale age-browning to margins, slight rubbing to first pastedown where a previous owner's name has been erased, slight rippling to endpapers, otherwise a very good clean copy. MORE IMAGES ATTACHED TO THIS LISTING.

Mallory, Sir ThomasLe Morte Darthur. (The Noble and Joyous Booke entyled Le Morte Darthur) Le Morte Darthur. (The Noble and Joyous Booke entyled Le Morte Darthur). William Caxton. Westminster, 31 July, 1485 is followed by the 1498 Edition 'The Boke of Noble Kyng. Kyng Arthure Somtyme Kynge of Englande and His Noble Actes and Feates of armes of Chyvalrye, and His Noble Knyghtes and Table Rounde and is Deuyeded in to. XXI Bookes. Wynkyn de Worde, Westminster. 1498. This edition is an exact copy of that rare and unusual work that includes the wood cut engravings found throughout the text. This facsimile copy was done by the Elizabethan scholar A. H. Bullen who established the Shakespeare Head Press in Stratford-up-Avon in 1904. His original aim was to produce a good edition of Shakespeare's works, and his ten volume Stratford Town Shakespeare was completed by 1907. After Bullen died in 1927, the press was acquired by a partnership including Basil Blackwell, the Oxford bookseller. Bernard Newdigate was appointed as typographer and under his direction the press worked within the Morris tradition: Ovid's Metamorphoses was the first book he produced as a limited edition. This Wynck de Worde edition is taken from a 'perfect', we say that with a bit of tongue in cheek, edition of the Morte de Arthur, was done on paper stock that nearly as possible matches the original as well as the type and the engravings. It is a delightful copy and it will sharpen your skills at reading Olde Englysshe literature. One can hear the lilt of the voice as in this time period, most everyone read aloud. Entering a library in this time period would have meant that there was a constant and sustained sound of people reading works out loud...ssshh was not invented until long after. King Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth both read silently, a tradition started many centuries before by Saint Augustine (he was thought mad, gifted and touched by the Lord God because he could read silently and tell the audience everything that he had just read!). It is said also, that Southern speech and up until the 1940's and 50's certain communities off the coast of North Carolina had retained what linguists believed the truest living speech of old English that Henry the 8th and Elizabeth and indeed even Shakespeare would have sounded like. Caxton's printing was and is very phonetic to the ear and very pleasing to learn to read and indeed, read out loud....A wonderful book set for any collection or you can buy the original for a couple of million dollars!Libraries worldwide that own item: 1 (of this 1933 Edition)Title: The noble and joyous boke entytled le Morte Darthur ... Whyche boke was reduced in to Englysshe by the well dysposyd knyghte Syr Thomas Malory.Author(s): Malory, Thomas, Sir, 15th cent.Publication: Oxford : Printed at the Shakespeare Head Press and published by Basil Blackwell,Year: 1933Description: 2 v ; 4to.Language: EnglishDocument Type: BookEntry: 19970201Update: 20080517Accession No: OCLC: 181668176Database: WorldCat

CUBE, JOHANN VON (JOHANNES DE CUBA, JOHANN WONNECKE VON KAUB) - [INCUNABULUM FROM "THE MASTER OF THE ART OF PRINTING" - THE ONLY BOTANICAL INCUNABULUM OF REAL IMPORTANCE]Gart der Gesuntheit. Begin (fol. 2 recto:) Offt und vil habe ich by mir selbst betracht die wu(n)dersame werck des schepfers der natuer...(ibid. verso:) Vnd nenne diss buch zu latin Ortus Sanitatis. uff teutsch ein gart der gesuntheit. In welchem garten man findet.ccc.und xxxv. kreuter mit anderen creaturen krafft und dogenden...und gemeinlich in den apoteken zu artzney gebrucht werden un der dissen by den vierdhalp hudert mit iren farben und gestalt als sie syn hier erschynen...(fol. 74 verso:) versuecht an vil enden von mir Meister Johan von Cube. (Mainz, Peter Schoeffer, 1485). (Colophon:) Disser Harbarius is zu mencz gedruckt...uff dem xxviii dage des mercz MCCCCLXXXV. Folio. (27,5x20,5 cm.). Rebound recently in a fine pastiche of full brown morocco with 3 broad raised bands on back, rectangular blindtoolings to covers, imitating a renaissance-binding.342 leaves of 359. No signatures and leaves unnumbered. (Lacking fol. 1-3,8,11,12-14,148-49,208,210-11,356-59). All lacking leaves supplied in facsimile and toned to age. With 378 (plants 357, animals 11) wood-cuts in the text (full to one-third page) in full original hand-colouring (fol. 2 verso: "hudert mit iren farben"). 4 ms. leaves in old hand withbound (indexes and entries), in contemporary hand on fol. 4: "Meister Johan von Cube". On fol. 232 old owner name: "Johannes Ehrardus 1628" and fol. 262: "A.K.JE... Anno 1590 ?"A few leaves with ink-stains. 4 leaves torn with some loss (supplied in facsimile). Some scattered marginalia in ink in at least 3 different old hands. Some finger-soiling to lower right corners, some but not many leaves with dampstains to upper margin. Some scattered brownspots, a few other smaller paper-repairs and 5 leaves with a small hole. With the illustration of "Tapsia" on fol. 314 in upright position, a variant described by Klebs. Fol. 317 recto & verso with a long commentary in contemporary hand. The hand-colouring well preserved and printed on well preserved thick paper.. The extremely scarce first edition of GART DER GESUNDHEIT, a truly remarkable book, not only in the sense of its content as "a landmark in the history of botanical illustration"(Hunt), but also with its position in the history of printing, as it was produced by Gutenberg's head assistant (Meisterschüler), PETER SCHOEFFER in Mainz, in the Gutenberg premises which were taken over by Schoeffer and Fust. The book has been called THE MOST IMPORTANT MEDIEVAL WORK ON NATURAL HISTORY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, and it is the first Herbal at all written and printed in the vernacular. Claus Nissen (in BBI) describes the publication of it as a decisive turning-point in botanical illustration ("das (es) in der botanischen Illustrationsgeschichte ein ganz entscheidenden Wendepunkt bedeutet").GART DER GESUNDHEIT takes up a unique position in the family of Herbals or Hortus, which in the sense of the fifteenth century is not a botanical treatise, but a medical book intended for both the layman and the physician. It calls attention to the valuable herbs free to all, and similarly also to remedies derived from animals and minerals, a popular medicine book but in no way popular in the modern sense, as it served also in the technical education at the time. The prototype of the Hortus-family is HERBARIUS (Latin), also published by Schoeffer in 1484, the GART, though based on the Herbarius, "is a new creation in the vernacular, distinguished by original concepts, both textually and artistically, while the Hortus proper, combining both the virtues and vices of the former, is more ambitious in scope, more complex because of added material - an elaboration of the Herbarius, but less lucid and original than the Gart der Gesundheit" (Klebs).The GART inspired several contemporary printing presses immediately and gave rise to at least 14 other incunabula editions of Latin Herbarius (none in folio, mostly in quarto) and none with the GART- illustrations, but with copies in smaller design. Secondly, the 15 famous copied editions with the same title and also in the vernacular, starting already the same year with the fine incunabula from Augsburg, printed by Schönsperger 1485 (Schönsperger 1486, 1487, 1488, Dickmut, Ulm 1487, Grüninger, Strassburg c. 1488, Basel, Furter, c. 1490 etc.) Their cuts are copies from the GART. - The last member of the family, the HORTUS (Sanitatis or Ortus), sometimes called "the larger Hortus" - GART "the smaller Hortus", was inspired and largely derived from the GART and it has 5 incunabula editions, among these the famous Meydenbach-edition, Mainz 1491, the 3 Prüss-editions, Strassbourg 1496, 1497 and ca. 1499, and the Paris-edition by Verrad ca. 1500. Later the GART inspired both Fuchs and Brunfels.The GART DER GESUNDHEIT must not be confused with the Herbarius Latinus of 1484 by Schoeffer, although it is based on this, as the GART is not a translation from this, but a much enlarged work, nearly twice in proportion, in folio, not in quarto and with new illustrations. Many of the wood-cuts to the Gart are evidently made from drawings of living plants and mostly with full-page illustrations. The wood-cuts must in part have been based on earlier drawings in manuscript, but a considerable number were newly and faithfully designed from nature, and all are cut with a charming simplicity and true decorative quality. Bernard Reuwich of Utrecht is thought to have made 65 of the cuts. He accompanied Bernhard von Breydenbach to Palestine in 1483-84 (Peregrinationes in terram Sanctam, 1486) and these 65 cuts were the FIRST FAITHFULL RENDITIONS OF PLANTS IN A PRINTED BOOK, and showed some middle-eastern plants for the first time. These large cuts were never reprinted! - The STRAWBERRY, cultivated during the 15th century is here depicted for the first time (fol. 160). The text of the GART was probably done by Dr. Johann von Cube, physician of the town of Frankfurt. He compiled it from older works such as Hippocrates, Galen, Plinius, Dioscorides etc.. "Since it is one of the most extensive of the early printed works in German language it thus became an important monument to modern German language, a remarkable source for folklore and dialect studies" (Hunt Collection).PETER SCHOEFFER was Gutenberg's head assistant (Meisterschüler), and he worked with him on the 42-line Bible from around 1452, and he finished the printing of the Gutenberg-Bible in 1455 after he and Fust had taken over the Gutenberg-officin. From 1468 Schoeffer was the only owner of the business. For the GART, Schoeffer invented a NEW TYPE FACE which he later added to his repertoire, particularly suitable as a German text type. It belongs to the group of semi-cursive types which became popular within German printers in the late part of the century (the Oberrheinische Druckbastarda). It was also used in Schoeffer's famous "Chronecken der Sassen, 1492". - "When it appeared, the Hortus (i.e. the GART) was the most ambitious illustrated work which Peter Schoeffer had produced" (Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt in Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim and Mainz..N.Y., 1950). - Schoeffer is one of the greatest in the history of printing and he was Europe's first broadly successful printer of books. The first 40 years in the history of printing was an eventful period, and Schoeffer is distinguished by many innovations, including the first printed book stating its date of publication, the first book printed in multiple colours throughout, the first book printed with decorative initials, the first book printed with a publisher's device, and the first edition of any classical text, including the first Greek type."In Dr. Klebs opinion, the Gart der Gesundheit was a landmark in the history of botanical illustration, one which marked perhaps THE GREATEST SINGLE STEP ever made in that art; its delineations of plants, breaking away from the traditional stylized woodcut, were not only unsurpassed, but unequalled for nearly half a century." (Jane Quinby in the note to Hunt No. 5). Wilfrid Blunt (in The Art of Botanical Illustration) calls it the "ONLY BOTANICAL INCUNABULUM OF REAL IMPORTANCE"."So ist dieser GART wohl das wichtigste naturwissenschaftliche, illustrierte Werk des ausgehende Mittelalters zu nennen. Man kann dieses Buch wohl ein WUNDER DES BUCHDRUCKERKUNST nennen." (Karl Eugen Heilmann in "Kräuterbücher in Bild und Geschichte" 1973).No more than a handful of copies of this work have survived in public libraries, 3 complete copies are recorded (Library of Congress and New York Botanical Garden Library, only one in Europe: Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg) - the 2 copies in the British Library and in Basel/Bern are both incomplete.Hain *8948 - Garrison & Morton No 95 - Nissen BBI No 2267 - Hunt Botanical Collection No 5 - Klebs, Incunabula Scientifica et Medica: 507.1 - Pritzel: 10823. - Brunet III p. 343 (wrongly describes it as a translation from the Latin Herbarius). - Wellcome No 3319 (incomplete) - Not in Waller-and Osler Collections